Alfred’s an amazing tool for increasing your productivity, but you can only make the most of it if you’re trying out all the awesome user-created workflows available for download. Sure, Alfred’s pretty sweet all on its own–Pedro Lobo thought it was pretty wonderful in the AppStorm review of Alfred 2 last month–but you need to put in a little elbow grease to get the best experience. Or, you can let other people put in all the effort and enjoy the fruits of their labor!

Since Alfred 2 was released, a ton of workflows have been uploaded and shared on the Alfred forums, GitHub, and elsewhere. I’ve gathered together sixteen great workflows to help you get more done with Alfred. (more…)

I’m in desperate need of a good photo editor, but I don’t want too many bells or whistles. Being honest, the reason I need a photo editor is the same reason I need a simple editor. I’m not that great at making my images look good, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to show off all my amazing snaps to my friends.

Recently released Fotor may be my saving grace. It’s simple enough that I can make my way through it without turning all of my family photos green, but does Fotor have the goods to make my photos great? (more…)

Here we are trying to make the weekend closer for you. In this edition you’ll find out about the Aereo problems, the folding of the Ambrosia Software development team and the rumored roadmap for the upcoming Office releases. Then, of course, we’ve also got the best deals of the week for you to spend your hard-earned cash wisely. Don’t miss our reviews for the discounted apps, which are linked through the favicon right next to them.

If you’re in the tech support business or are even the designated “family tech support representative”, then you probably know how frustrating it can be to try and resolve a computer problem over the phone with a user who isn’t very computer literate.

Enter TeamViewer, a remote support tool that’s more than just simple screen sharing. It’s free, doesn’t require Java, and actually works great. Let’s take a look.

It’s been three years since making the big switch to the Mac, and within those thirty-six months I’ve tried numerous apps that have significantly changed the way I work. I’ve gotten my hands dirty with a variety of productivity tools, finance software, utilities, and photo/image editing apps of various shapes, colors, and file sizes that it’s taken me a while to actually find the apps that I can settle down with.

I’ve pretty much filled up fifteen pages of purchase history, but I’ve managed to find a couple of apps that have become integral to my workflow as a writer and an avid user of the web. These apps have won my loyalty, and I’m glad to be able to shine the spotlight on them in this week’s The Apps We Use feature.(more…)

We just closed our giveaway, and would like to extend our congratulations to our winners: Rob, Guy einy, and Danic!

There’s so many ways to enjoy music on your Mac these days, but one of the old standbys that still works great is internet radio. There’s online radio stations of every genre and style, and radio is still a great way to find new music when you’re tired of playing your iTunes songs on repeat.

And if you want to listen to radio on your Mac, you just about can’t do better than Radium 3, the newest version of the popular internet radio app. We called it a sleek menubar radio app in our review, and it’s the way I personally listen to online radio throughout the work day.

Radium is a rather cheap utility at just $9.99 (or $6.99 during its still-running Easter sale), but we’ve got something even better for our readers this week: 3 free copies of Radium!

All the internet radio you want, right from your menubar

To get your chance at one of our 3 free copies of Radium 3, just comment below and let us know your favorite internet radio station. You can get an extra entry by sharing our giveaway on your favorite social network, then leaving another comment below with a link to your post.

We’ll close the giveaway this Friday, April 12th, so hurry and get your entry in!

Envato staff or those who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.

Dropbox is nothing short of incredible. When the whole world thought file sharing had to be complex and kludgy, a MIT student who forgot his flash drive showed us all that file sharing could be simple enough that we’d all want to do it. You’ve got to trust it with your data, and be willing to pay to store more than several gigs of data, but beyond that, there’s little to make you question using Dropbox. It’s ubiquitous for good reason.

That doesn’t mean it’s the be all and end all of file syncing. There’s Google Drive, Microsoft’s Skydrive, and Amazon’s new Cloud Drive sync. But one new competitor, AeroFS, is taking on Dropbox directly with its own private sync solution, in an app that might be the absolute closest competitor Dropbox has seen yet. It’s fresh out of beta for individuals and teams, so let’s take a look. (more…)

I recently stumbled upon a great iPad app that, as strange as it may sound, has changed the way I work with my Mac. You can read our full review of Actions on iPad.AppStorm, but in a nutshell, Actions is an app that allows you to trigger keyboard shortcuts from your iPad.

Now while this may not seem very useful or relevant, think of the amount of keyboard shortcuts apps such as Photoshop have. Now imagine being able to launch these from your iPad, visually organised in a way that makes sense to you. Or imagine harnessing the power of Automator, Keyboard Maestro or Alfred with the aid of your iPad.

Seem more appealing? Then read on for a few interesting use cases of Actions for iPad with your Mac. Since it can launch keyboard shortcuts at the tap of one finger, you can make keyboard shortcuts that’d be rather unwieldily to enter on a Mac’s keyboard, and then use them in Actions easily. And even if you don’t have an iPad or don’t want to get Actions, you’ll likely find some shortcut based tricks here that’ll speed up work on your Mac.(more…)

Odds are, you have more devices laying around your house than ever before: a smartphone, most likely, along with, perhaps, an eReader, tablet, iPod, or gaming device. Keeping them all in sync is frustrating at best, impossible at worst. That’s where our sponsor this week, SyncMate, comes in.

SyncMate Free lets your Address Book and Calendar between your Macs, PCs, and mobile devices of all types: Windows Mobile phones, BlackBerry, Android (including the Kindle Fire), PSP, and more. You can even sync your online accounts, keeping everything synced between your Dropbox, Yahoo!, and iCloud accounts. You’ll also be able to view the messages on your mobile devices.

Then, with the Expert Edition, you can also sync iTunes media, iPhoto photos, notes, bookmarks, and sticky notes between all of your devices. You’ll also be able to sync folders in realtime between computers, and export text messages from your older Android, Windows Mobile, or Nokia phone. You’ll also be able to convert mobile media formats like .3GP to standard formats for newer devices. That might be just what you need to get everything moved from your old devices to a shiny new iPhone.

Go Get it!

Ready to make syncing all your devices simpler? Then you should go try out SyncMate. You can download the free version of SyncMate from their site, then upgrade to SyncMate Expert for $39.95 when you want more features. You can even get lifetime updates included for just $11.95 extra, if you’d like.

It's been over 2 years — and two OS X releases — since the Mac App Store was launched on OS X Snow Leopard. In that time, it's become ubiquitous in the world of Mac Apps, and most new apps we try out and review are exclusively on the Mac App Store. In fact, a good number of the apps I use daily are exclusively on the Mac App Store.

For the most part, the App Store is a great addition to the Mac, making it easier for developers to sell apps and giving us a centralized place for users to find apps and get updates. But, it's not all perfect: there's restrictions to what App Store apps can do, and some developers have backtracked from switching to the App Store, moving new versions of their apps back to exclusive sale on their own site.

As app users, it's not too often that we get the choice of where to buy apps. If developers sell on the App Store, usually the app is only on the App Store, and otherwise, it's only on their own site. There are apps that are an exception, such as the Omni Group's apps, which are sold on both the App Store and on their own site.

That's why we're wondering: When you can choose, would you rather buy an app from the App Store or from developers' own sites? Fill out the poll, and let us know why you choose what you do in the comments below.